This was my first foray into the Mother Reader’s 48 Hour Book Challenge. I didn’t set any goals going in, other than to read a lot! I could not dedicate the entire 48 hours to reading, as I already had a dinner planned last night (which was well worth it, as I learned I am going to be an honorary “aunt”!) and today I had to dedicate a few hours to food shopping and cooking dinner.

I loved participating in the challenge though. I finally got a chance to read a lot of the books that I have been meaning to get to but never do for one reason or another. Most of the books I read were already published, because they tend to get moved to the bottom of the pile when I receive an interesting ARC.

What I learned:

While I am a fast reader normally, the competitive nature in me forced me to read even faster. This meant that I could not savor books that I really loved, and that frustrated me. It also meant that I skipped reading one of the books I really wanted to read, because I had been warned I would want to savor it.

The other people in my life think I am crazy to do this. And reading is a bit solitary, so the BF spent the hours playing his new video game.

I am getting old! Staying up past 2am to read used to be a very frequent occurrence. Friday and Saturday night I could not keep my eyes open past 12am!

It takes me 30-45 minutes to write a review and it is difficult to cut down on that, even if it means having more time to read.

Even if I pick out my books beforehand, I still end perusing my piles in between books and choosing different ones.

11 Responses

I had that problem, with spending a lot of time writing reviews. But now that I’m done, even though I couldn’t read as many books, I’m happy that the ones I did read, I took time to review properly. Looks like you read some great stuff!! We didn’t quite overlap, but I also read a Margaret Peterson Haddix, and I considered, but didn’t get to, Violet Raines.

I’ve read a good chunk of this! I enjoy Haddix and really liked Turnabout. I also enjoyed Cornelia and Princess Academy. I actually read Main Street #3 for the challenge this weekend. I’ve looked for #1 and #2 in the library to no avail, so I went ahead and read #3.

[…] I LOVED the books the suggested. They focused on middle school and young adult titles, all were new or newer, and they divided them into categories like sports, the dead, and oddball heroes/heroines. Check out the list here, and pass it on! To see my own list of great summer reads, click here! […]

[…] Last year was my first foray into the reading challenge and it was awesome! It felt so good to just set aside an entire weekend to do nothing but read and review. My stats from last year: Total pages read- 3498 […]

[…] YA titles, too. In the post, you can link to the GMA-recommended list, or the Reading Zone’s own list, courtesy of MotherReader’s 48-hour Book Challenge. She also posted her 2007-2008Class Book […]